cybersol

I just wanted to make sure you knew. I am guessing that rendezvous will be a pain and more expensive fuel wise than being inside Minmus SOI, but I look forward to hearing how it goes.

In my career save, I had only unlocked clamp-o-tron juniors. I built a rocket with them stacked end-to-end that had crazy tear itself apart wobbles in atmosphere with SAS. The wobbly version had a strut cage around 3 sets of 4 modular girders transferring the load up the rocket. The middle set of 4 girders was offset 45* from the ends, and I was using 2 sets of 8 struts in an X pattern to transfer the load between the ends and the middle. It was all a wobbly mess when using SAS, even just in stabilization mode. I was confused because these types of strut cages worked well in earlier versions. In total frustration and because I was already hitting part count limits, I ripped out all the struts. I then put the 3 sets of 4 modular girders all aligned at the same angle on the rocket, and simply connected between the ends and the middle with 2 sets of 4 straight struts. The 8 struts now being aligned with the airflow totally got rid of the wobbles! TL;DR I think the drag on the X version of struts was creating significant cross forces that greatly enhanced the SAS wobble.

Congrats on the fly by and orbit! No that would depend more on how drag decreases with altitude, instead of how it varies with speed. That said, I am the wrong person to ask about that topic because I have the belief that if you have to slow down a rocket with throttle then you are doing it wrong. A better designed rocket with more control authority will punch through transonic while maintaining control and end up saving fuel due to lower gravity losses.

Langrange points are solutions to 3-body physics and KSP uses a 2-body approximation. Ergo, if you put something outside of Minmus SOI, you will just be in orbit of Kerbin and Minmus will have no effect on you. In a lower orbit you will speed away from the planet and in a higher orbit it will speed away from you. So you will likely need a high Minmus orbit.

Calculating drag now requires a computer simulation to get accurate values. With that said, I have been using the calculator Invader Jim posted to get a ballpark idea of the number of parachutes to use.

Not sure about the pretty part, but I posted some here.

Congratulations! The best part is there is still so much to learn. How to farm that minty minmus for all its low gravity science. Interplanetary transfers that lead to exploring Duna, the diverse Jool system, and the final exam of Moho. Building better exploration craft for the light moons and better rovers for the heavy moons. Launching reusable SSTOs and tugs. Mastering resources and asteroids. Not to mention there and back again to Eve.

Drag and oscillations. They generate a large amount of drag for their size when active as control surfaces, and in combination with SAS they seem to cause oscillations that further increase drag inefficiencies. You can use the in game drag lines to see this effect as your plane goes transonic.

I'm not sure, since I have not tried this myself yet. Putting together what I've read, I think you might have to use the surface scanner to unlock the higher resolution data, possibly even for each biome separately?

Helpful hint, check that your station fulfills all the checkmarks except orbit on the launching pad.

You are likely better off with 4 rapiers and 2 jets. You will need enough LFO to give around 1700+ dv after air-breathing is done. What is you final horizontal speed before switching to rockets?

You might want to look at the chart I posted above...

I find it funny that people mostly play with turn shape, when in most cases turn altitude end has the most impact on dV expenditure. As you lower the end altitude, raising the final angle above 0 will also become more important.

Some more systematic observations from a reddit poster: I was a little surprised that the higher drag region is actually wider than it "feels" with rapiers. Their increasing thrust curve hides some of the drag effects as you speed up. For how its implemented, you likely don't want to know, but check out Overhaul's for 1.0 sticky if you want to know more.

Here's my quick summary: Spinning out of control essentially comes down to a contest between drag and control. When the drag overcomes your control authority, you go for a spin. You can decrease drag by staying closer to prograde and building a more aerodynamic rocket. You can increase control using engine gimbals, stabilizer wheels, and control surfaces. Also note that drag increases significantly right around mach 1 (340 m/s). So you should stay pointed as prograde as possible at speeds around 280-400 m/s. On a rocket control fins should be as low and outside as possible. If you are using control fins on more than one stage, the CoL needs to stay below the CoM at all times, even as the tanks empty.

Guess the craft file was added as I was replying.. So much this! While you are at it, disable all control on the airbrakes and just use them for... braking. Also, for the asymmetric engine flameout, another option is to install the Intake Build Aid mod and have it re-order the intakes and engines for you (press F7 and you're done). Finally, if your willing to sacrifice some drag for ease of use, higher than around 0.0166 intake air per engine will mean you will run out of thrust before you run out of air.

The most in depth discussion of the new aero I've seen is here. If you really want to dive down the rabbit hole, OhioBob and Claw hash things out further on pages 5&6.

I always add inclination into the KER hud that shows apo and peri, because its that fundamental to your orbit.

More engines would fix it, but you can probably nurse it to orbit. Start by rising as fast as you can while keeping speed below 260 m/s (because drag is much higher in the region above there). When you get up to 13 km, level off to +5* or even less if needed and accelerate through transonic to 450 m/s. Then raise up again an gain speed until you the air-breathers don't accelerate anymore.

Yeah that sounds pretty close to what the transfer planner predicts, which is 1030 m/s and 270 days travel time for a 100 km Kerbin orbit to 100 km Duna orbit leaving about a day later. If you perform those maneuvers, you should end up with an insertion dV much closer to what it predicts, which is 641 m/s. Also, as someone else pointed out, since Duna has an atmosphere, you could try to use it to aerobrake into your Duna orbit. That would save you a lot or even almost all of the insertion costs, but it can be a little more tricky. Definitely save/load before the first few times you try it.

Sounds like you are coming in hot! This happened to me too on all my early transfers, and I bet its fairly common. What you probably did was setup the encounter with a flatter, more direct profile. In contrast, an optimal Hohmann transfer to Duna is a rounder half-ellipse where you Kerbol apoapsis just barely intercepts the planet at the precise moment it is there to greet you with open arms. The planner you linked includes an ejection angle, and that angle, in addition to the window timing, is the key to getting this optimal rounder transfer.

Yes, that means you need to be a stable orbit above 70 km apoapsis and 70 km periapsis. It will say sub-orbital when it means over 70 km apo but under 70 km peri. If you have a green check there, it should mean you have satisfied that condition though. I've also heard that sometimes a quicksave/quickload may help if you really have fulfilled the conditions but the game has not registered it yet. EDIT: You can use the gear button near the altimeter or use the right click menu on the part itself to open and close it. Yeah staging it doesn't make much sense now that I think about it more

Seriously, don't plan on an Eve return unless you want your whole game to become all about that single thing. But if you are still feeling machositic, from what I've read there are basically only three viable engines deep inside Eve: Aerospike, Mammoth, and to a lesser extent Mainsail.

Intake build aid has now been updated for 1.0 by LordFjord, since it was discovered you can still have asymmetric flameout without it. EDIT: Note to self, read post after question before posting

I'm not sure if it actually helps, but since you are running Nvidia you could try adding "__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1" to the front of your command line.